A Million Miles Away(9)

“Hi,” Kelsey said. It was strange to hear her own voice.

“Would you mind taking off your sunglasses, please?” Even as the woman sat, she still seemed tall.

Kelsey crossed her arms. “I’d rather not.”

The woman’s eyebrows knit together. “All right, then.”

The woman stared at her, waiting. “My sister died,” Kelsey said. Wow, there it was. It had just come out. Over the days since it had happened, Kelsey had never once said it aloud.

The woman pointed at the chair. “Have a seat, honey.”

Kelsey found herself sitting immediately. She wanted to lay her head on the desk for a second. Just for a second. But she remained upright.

“Was she deployed?”

“Who?”

“Your sister.”

“Oh, no. No.”

The woman folded her hands. “I’m confused.”

Kelsey hadn’t really thought this through, and the lack of sleep was no help. With the woman’s eyes on her, unmoving, Kelsey found she missed the feeling of being able to talk. Of knowing what to say. She forced herself to continue.

“Here’s the deal. My sister had a boyfriend in the army, Peter, and he doesn’t know that she… that she’s gone. He’s in Afghanistan somewhere, and I think someone should tell him.”

The woman spoke slowly, emphasizing her words. “So you came to the Army Recruiting Office?”

Kelsey could see the woman searching for her eyes behind her sunglasses.

“How else am I supposed to reach him? I don’t know his parents or any of his friends. And I was thinking maybe you could look him up and send him a letter or something. His name is Peter.”

A smile twitched on the woman’s mouth. “You said that.”

Kelsey sighed. “Can you look him up?”

The woman turned to her computer. “If he enlisted around here, I might have a record of his address, but I can’t give that to you.”

“What about—” Kelsey began.

“Nor can I give you his location in Afghanistan. But I might be able to talk to someone who can reach his parents. What’s his last name?”

Kelsey’s mouth, which had opened to tell her, closed. She didn’t know Peter’s last name. The person who knew his last name was now nothing more than disintegrating dust and molecules, sitting in a tin can.

All she could do was shake her head.

“You don’t know it,” the woman said. She wasn’t being mean. It was just the truth.

“Nope,” Kelsey said shortly.

The woman took her hands away from the keyboard, and they hovered for a second, not knowing what to do.

Kelsey pictured herself from the woman’s view: a morose teenage girl in Victoria’s Secret sweatpants, refusing to take off her sunglasses, asking her to search the entire army database for a boy named Peter.

A laugh escaped the woman, but she wasn’t mocking Kelsey. She could tell by the way her eyes wrinkled when she laughed. It was just funny, that’s all.

“Pretty ridiculous, right?” Kelsey stood up. “The whole thing is just goddamn ridiculous.”

The woman stood with her. “I’d help you if I could.”

Kelsey turned. “I’m gonna go now.”

“Just a minute,” the woman said. Kelsey paused in the door. “Eat something, all right? You look like you need to eat something.”

Kelsey nodded. Something was rising in her throat that she had to push down. She sped home with the radio turned all the way up, not really hearing the music. The brown tint of her sunglasses made everything look like an old-fashioned movie.

When she came in the front door, her father was standing in the middle of the circle of sad adults. They were all holding hands like a bunch of preschoolers. Tears were running down her dad’s face, through his beard. Though the room was completely silent, no one had noticed she’d come in. Or that she’d left, for that matter.

Kelsey’s eyeballs felt on fire.

She ran up the stairs as quickly as possible, but she couldn’t un-hear her father’s voice. “This is part of a poem I’ve memorized. It helps me. If you’d like, you can repeat it after me. Okay. ‘As there is muscle in darkness’…”

A chorus of voices. “As there is muscle in darkness.”

Michelle’s room stayed dark, even during the day.

“‘There is cowardice to holding on.’”

“There is cowardice to holding on.”

He continued, “‘A cottonwood flare’…”

They echoed, these strangers. “‘A cottonwood flare’…”

Kelsey kicked open the door to her room. She could still hear their voices. There were cottonwoods lining her street, lining the highway where her sister veered off the road, lining every street in Kansas.

“‘A hand to straighten her collar’…”

She slid open the screen to her porch. Her and Michelle’s porch. She kicked over the potted trees that were meant to be a barrier, cursing them.

“‘A bravery in good-bye’…”

She collapsed on Michelle’s side, putting her cheek to the wooden slats still splattered with the outlines of paintings, her palms pressing where the two of them stood not long ago.